The graphics card is GeForce RTX 3060 most popular on steam, a fact that surprised many and revived the question that still raises doubts, is it better to buy a GeForce RTX 4060 or get a GeForce RTX 3060? Keep in mind that we are referring to the 12 GB GeForce RTX 3060, from The 8GB model is not worth it at all.

The price of the GeForce RTX 3060 12GB has dropped quite a bit in recent months. Today it can be purchased from 299.90 eurosbut the price of GeForce RTX 4060 has also dropped a lot in recent days and right now we have it available on sale with a starting price 309.91 euros.

The price difference between the two is minimal, even if a priori it may seem to us that the GeForce RTX 3060 is the more interesting option, since it has 12 GB of graphics memory The reality is completely different. Don’t worry if you’ve fallen into this error, it’s something completely normal after the frenzy unleashed by a certain popular YouTube medium about graphics memory.

It must be clear that GeForce RTX 3060 and GeForce RTX 4060 are graphics cards designed for optimal playback in 1080p resolution, although they also offer good performance at 1440p, and when we go to those resolutions, we have 8 GB of graphics memory is enough move current games with maximum qualities without problems, except for the exceptions that can be counted on the fingers of one hand and which are simply poorly optimized titles.

GeForce RTX 4060 vs GeForce RTX 3060

Both graphics cards are placed in the mid-range, but use different architectures and have very different specifications. The GeForce RTX 3060 is a previous generation graphics card that uses the Ampere architecture and is therefore compatible with DLSS Super Resolution and Ray Reconstruction. Its RT cores are second generation.

The GeForce RTX 4060 is a next-generation graphics card that uses the Ada Lovelace architecture and is also compatible with DLSS Super Resolution and Ray Reconstruction, but also adds Frame generation supportand has third generation RT cores.

GeForce RTX 4060 specifications

• Graphics core AD107 in 5nm.
• 18.9 billion transistors.
• Cover area: 146 mm square.
• Graphics Processing Clusters (GPC): 3.
• Texture Processing Clusters (TPC): 12.
• 3072 shaders at 2.46 GHz.
• 96 texturing units.
• 48 raster units.
• 96 tensor cores of the fourth generation.
• 24 cores of the third generation RT.
• 128-bit memory bus.
• 8 GB GDDR6 at 17 GHz with a bandwidth of 272 GB/s.
• 15.11 TFLOPs of performance in FP32.
• 24 MB L2 cache (453 GB/s effective).
• TGP 115 watts, average consumption 110 watts.
• It uses the PCIe Gen4 x8 standard.
• You need an additional 8-pin power connector.

GeForce RTX 3060 specifications

• Graphics core GA106 in 8nm.
• 12 billion transistors.
• Cover area: 276 mm square.
• Graphics Processing Clusters (GPC): 3.
• Texture Processing Clusters (TPC): 14.
• 3,584 shaders at 1.77 GHz in turbo mode.
• 112 texturing units.
• 48 raster units.
• 112 tensor cores of the third generation.
• 28 second generation RT cores.
• 192-bit memory bus.
• 12 GB GDDR6 at 15 GHz with a bandwidth of 360 GB/s.
• 12.74 TFLOPs of performance in FP32.
• 3 MB L2 cache.
• 170W TGP.
• It uses the PCIe Gen3 x16 standard.
• You need an additional 8-pin power connector.

As we can see in these spec lists, the GeForce RTX 4060 is more powerful, more advanced, and also has lower power consumption, which means it’s more efficient. Considering that the price difference between the two is about 10 euros, it is clear that it is not worth deciding on the GeForce RTX 3060 and that it is best to go directly for its successor, but is it better? how big is the difference between the two if we are talking about brute force?

The attached graph allows us to see that the GeForce RTX 4060 is on average 18% faster at 1080p and 15% more powerful at 1440p. It’s important to keep in mind that the differences can vary greatly depending on each specific game, as in some titles the GeForce RTX 3060 closes the gap, but in others it falls far short of the GeForce RTX 4060.

We must also keep in mind that the GeForce RTX 4060 offers better ray tracing performance. This is possible thanks to the optimizations and improvements that NVIDIA introduced with the Ada Lovelace architecture both at the shader level and in the third generation RT cores. The difference is 16% in 1080p and 14% in 1440p in favor of it.

We encounter a limiting situation only because of the graphics memory when we move in 4K with ray tracing, At this level, both offer almost identical average performance, but it’s an unrealistic scenario because they’re not designed to move games with this configuration. The performance-to-consumption ratio is also clearly better than the GeForce RTX 3060, as the GeForce RTX 4060 has an approximate average consumption 115 wattswhile the former moves on average 179 watts.

The GeForce RTX 4060 offers excellent performance, has lower power consumption and is also compatible with Frame Generation, a technology that can significantly improve the smoothness of games, which does not work on the GeForce RTX 3060. To give you an example, in Cyberpunk 2077, the GeForce RTX 4060 achieves an average 30 FPS in 1080p with ray tracing in crazy and ultra quality, but when activating DLSS (Super Resolution and Frame Generation) in quality mode the average goes up to 88 FPS. This result doubles the performance offered by the GeForce RTX 3060 in the mentioned game with the same configuration.

Keep in mind that the GeForce RTX 4060 is a graphics card very fresh, and that it does not need a large cooling system to operate at optimal temperature values, which means that even the most modest models are able to offer fantastic results in this regard. Raw performance values ​​may vary slightly depending on each model’s overclocking, but the average differences end up being very small (between 1% and 3% in the best cases).

What processor do I need to connect to GeForce RTX 4060?

Since this is a mid-range graphics card, you don’t need a very powerful processor, although it should be taken into account that since it is designed for gaming mainly in 1080p, this component can significantly affect the final performance. OF Intel Core i5-10400F or Ryzen 5 5500 We would already be at the optimal level to move the mentioned graphics card.

If you have doubts about this topic, I invite you to study the guide we published at the beginning of this year, where we explain it clearly and directly. what processor is required for each graphics card. If you have any outstanding questions, you can leave them in the comments and I will be happy to help you solve them.